Change in National Debt under different Presidential administrations
Courtesy of James Fallows, The Atlantic.
A Panel’s Plan to Cut the Deficit
Published: November 12, 2010
Re “Some Fiscal Reality” (editorial, Nov. 11):
The current federal budget deficit was caused mainly by unnecessary wars and related military spending, the worst economic downturn since the 1930s, and large tax cuts and bailouts for the rich, all stemming from the Bush administration.
Now a bipartisan commission proposes that we solve the long-term deficit “problem” by cutting back Social Security, Medicare and other social welfare programs. Thus the poor, the sick and the elderly would pay for the tax breaks and bailouts for the already wealthy.
The Republicans have made it clear that they have only one economic goal: making the rich richer. Are there no Democrats left with any backbone?
Robert Ortner
Short Hills, N.J., Nov. 12, 2010
The writer was chief economist and under secretary of commerce during the Reagan administration and is the author of “Voodoo Deficits.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/13/opinion/l13panel.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Ortner&st=cse
Posted in Politics, The American Experience
Tough Liberal, by Richard Kahlenberg
Surprisingly readable indictment of New Left, neo-Liberals.
I mean, like “Moen” faucets. ?????????????????????????????? “Buy it for looks, buy it for life.” Do you think that would make a good GOP Congressional campaign slogan too?
BTW: Don’t know exactly why the above photo links to Druge, but it does. And, man, does your bandwidth crash when you click through to Drudge. Don’t know what kind of viruses (encephalitis?) and tracking crap they got over there but… Forewarned is forearmed.
Posted in Politics, The American Experience, Uncategorized
Posted in Politics, The American Experience
As perhaps the world’s most famous bike blogger, BikeSnobNYC enjoyed taking the piss out of Portland, Oregon in an article in Outside Magazine last year.
But really, attacking Portland’s pretension to be the most bike friendly city in the world is attacking a straw man. Too easy for you, BikeSnob! I offer, as evidence, no more than a single photo from a single well-known European city. When the bicycle is as commonplace and non-chalantly integrated into urban life as it is in this picture, American cycling advocates will truly have accomplished something. Even in Portland, they just have a long, long way to go yet.
Paris, 2003.
Posted in Cycling, The American Experience
Photo Courtesy Denver B-Cycle
“At first, I thought, ‘Gosh, public transportation, what’s
wrong with that, and what’s wrong with people parking their cars and riding their bikes?
And what’s wrong with incentives for green cars?’ But if you do your homework and research, you realize ICLEI is part of a greater strategy to rein in American cities under a United Nations treaty,” Maes said.
Makes you kind of wonder whether he also believes Denver mayor John Hickenlooper is Jewish?
By Christopher N. Osher
The Denver Post
Teamsters Local 456 Legal Service Fund
160 North Central Avenue
Elmsford, NY 10523-1913
Telephone: (914) 592-6232
Also the address for the pension and benefit fund.
Bring all your garbage, especially the maggot-covered meat and the dog droppings to Teamsters Local 456 headquarters!
Believe me, they’d do it to you!
Posted in Politics, The American Experience, Uncategorized
One of the best articles to date on the contradictions inherent in the Tea Party conception of the nexus of individual, society, and political economy, by J.M. Bernstein, University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research.
Quote:
The implicit bargain that many Americans struck with the state institutions supporting modern life is that they would be politically acceptable only to the degree to which they remained invisible, and that for all intents and purposes each citizen could continue to believe that she was sovereign over her life; she would, of course, pay taxes, use the roads and schools, receive Medicare and Social Security, but only so long as these could be perceived not as radical dependencies, but simply as the conditions for leading an autonomous and self-sufficient life. Recent events have left that bargain in tatters.
Posted in Politics, The American Experience
Associate Justice, U.S. Supreme Court, 2010-????.
You heard it here first. Share it on.
Posted in Politics, The American Experience, Uncategorized
Inspirations and Aspirations 